A technology disclosed herein relates to management of data in a storage system, and more particularly, to management of an encryption key used for storing encrypted data in a tape.
The amount of data processed by a computer system at a company or the like has been on the increase, which causes an increase in the amount of backup data to prevent data losses caused by failures or the like.
A tiered storage system is generally used to save a great amount of data at low cost. In the tiered storage system, frequently accessed data is stored in a storage medium such as a magnetic disk which is relatively costly but has high performance. On the other hand, for example, infrequently accessed data such as backup data is stored in a storage medium such as a magnetic tape which is relatively low in price.
JP 2006-163454 A and U.S. Pat. No. 6,353,878 disclose exemplary tiered storage systems.
The storage system disclosed in JP 2006-163454 A includes a disk interface for a host computer, and has a function of storing data of a logical volume in a magnetic tape.
The storage system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,353,878 backs up data from a primary data storage system to a secondary data storage system equipped with a tape library.
A technology of storing encrypted data in a tape to securely hold data is disclosed in, for example, “HP StorageWorks Secure Key Manager”, [online], Hewlett-Packard Development Company. L.P., [retrieved Jan. 17, 2008], Internet <URL: http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12814_div/12814_div.h tml>
According to the technology disclosed therein, encryption keys of various particle sizes, from an encryption key for each tape library to an encryption key for each tape, are managed. “HP StorageWorks Secure Key Manager” also discloses data encryption and decryption. According to “HP StorageWorks Secure Key Manager”, a tape library takes out an encryption key from Secure Key Manager when reading a tape.